The militant Hindu political party won big in India’s recent elections. Now the party’s vice chairman is calling for a law in Nepal to ban religious conversions. Hindus would just not be allowed, by law, to become Christians. This is already the case in Muslim countries.

The thought of banning thoughts and inner convictions seems very odd, as if a person could turn off what he or she believes by force of law. For Christians, especially Protestant Christians, religion is a matter of what a person believes. Other religions are about what a person is. If you are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or animist, your religion constitutes your cultural identity. To change your religion is to reject your family and to commit a kind of treason against your community. Christianity, on the contrary, is a faith for people of “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9), which is first manifested at Pentecost. [Read more…]